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The Growing Threat to Free Speech Online:
There are times when vitally important stories lurk behind the headlines. Yes, impeachment is historic and worth significant coverage, but it's not the only important story. The recent threat of war with Iran merited every second of intense world interest. But what if I told you that as we lurch from crisis to crisis there is a slow-building, bipartisan movement to engage in one of most significant acts of censorship in modern American history? What if I told you that our contemporary hostility against Big Tech may cause our nation to blunder into changing the nature of the internet to enhance the power of the elite at the expense of ordinary Americans?
I'm talking about the poorly-thought-out, poorly-understood idea of attempting to deal with widespread discontent with the effects of social media on political and cultural discourse and with the use of social media in bullying and harassment by revoking or fundamentally rewriting Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
[...] In 1996, [Congress] passed Section 230. The law did two things. First, it declared that "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." In plain English, this means that my comments on Twitter or Google or Yelp or the comments section of my favorite website are my comments, and my comments only.
But Section 230 went farther, it also declared that an internet provider can "restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable" without being held liable for user content. This is what allows virtually all mainstream social media companies to remove obscene or pornographic content. This allows websites to take down racial slurs – all without suddenly also becoming liable for all the rest of their users' speech.
It's difficult to overstate how important this law is for the free speech of ordinary Americans. For 24 years we've taken for granted our ability to post our thoughts and arguments about movies, music, restaurants, religions, and politicians. While different sites have different rules and boundaries, the overall breadth of free speech has been extraordinary.
[...] Large internet companies that possess billions of dollars in resources would be able to implement and enforce strict controls on user speech. Smaller sites simply lack the resources to implement widespread and comprehensive speech controls. Many of them would have no alternative but to shut down user content beyond minimalist input. Once again, the powerful would prevail.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ilsa on Wednesday January 29 2020, @07:07PM
And here we have a perfect example of why things are going in the direction they are.
The poster complains about the lack of speech, but they completely ignore the impact of throwing millions of assholes onto services where they can anonymously spew whatever they want with limited repercussions.
eg: I left Slashdot because I could no longer take the growing levels of alt-right, incel, hateful nonsense. And that's what people do. They walk away. The internet is the single most democratized communications medium ever invented. And it's been taken over by the worst aspects of humanity as a result, resulting in a medium that only the most stubborn are willing to wade through.
The only way people can take control of the situation is if they are willing to take _responsibility_ as well. The overwhelming majority do not, so there is this nice big gap left wide open for whoever has both the power and the willingness to manage it. The comparatively few individuals that try... well... you can only go so far before you just completely f__king exhausted and can't do it anymore, because the number of assholes outnumber you by several orders of magnitude, and altruism only goes so far against such an overwhelming force.
So yeah, people (not just Americans) are handing over the reigns of power to the "elite", because the alternative takes too much effort and there's not enough people willing to step up to the plate.